My Five #189

Five things worth sharing from the last week or so, brought to you by a different member of the Browser Media team every Friday.

This week’s My Five is by Alex.

1. EU’ve Got To Be Kidding Me

After the pivotal referendum yesterday which resurrected #DogsAtPollingStations keeping people upbeat amongst the uncertainty, the country woke up today to the news that the Leave campaign was victorious (just) in yesterday’s EU referendum. Whichever way you voted, the country is now entering a period of economic and political turmoil. Very worrying stuff.

It seems like those who have to live with the decision for the shortest time are the ones that wanted out, leaving the turmoil to linger with the country’s future generations. Thanks. Sitting firmly with the majority vote in my age group, I must not be the only one who woke up to social media news feeds full of things like this:

just had to turn down my phone screen brightness considering it was brighter than this country’s future at the minute #EUreferendum

One flicker of hope, which I’m not sure many people know, is that the referendum itself is not actually legally binding, but depends on the signing of article 50 of the Lisbon treaty, which ‘represents formal notification of any decision to leave.’ The Prime Minister therefore isn’t legally obliged to sign the article, and could disregard the public’s Brexit vote – well, he could have, had he not resigned this morning.

What will happen now? Watch this space.

2. TL;DR

For anyone who shared a story posted by the Science Post on June 4th titled “Study: 70% of Facebook users only read the headline of science stories before commenting,” the irony should definitely be felt, as the article contained nothing but “lorem ipsum” filler text.

A new study further validates the claim; according to computer scientists at Columbia University and the French National Institute, 59% of links shared on social media have never actually been clicked. Yup, that’s in the source linked above

Seeing as we trust news shared by our friends and family, this is very worrying as, according to the study, peer-to-peer shared articles are very important shaping political and cultural agendas in the public forum. This shows that many people are forming their opinions based on headlines and topline summaries of articles, which are often non-contextual, sensational or blatantly wrong, without delving deeper to substantiate their views.

3. Tennis Takes To The ‘Net

Wimbledon starts this coming Monday (27th June) and whilst the event holds its roots in British tradition and values, it is keeping its brand young by branching into new marketing channels in order to broaden its global fan base.

Tennis fans will be able to find content and engage with the event on more digital channels than ever before, including Snapchat, Periscope, Apple TV and software from IBM that analyses social media feeds and the conversations going on, assessing their relevance to tennis so that it can learn which topics are most relevant to Wimbledon’s fans. Followings on Facebook and Twitter grew 55% and 74% respectively last year, which has lead to discussions about potentially broadcasting full matches directly via those channels. Visits to Wimbledon’s mobile site went up 125% last year too, which could lead to the inclusion of a chat bot in time for next year’s tournament.

Alexandra Willis, head of comms, content and digital at the All English Lawn Tennis Club, says:

“We haven’t jumped on the bandwagon on some things as quickly as others, sure. But it has all been about reminding ourselves of the uniqueness of individual channels and only using them to better tell our story.” – via marketingweek.com

Embracing these new channels, and strategically staggering their adoption, is a smart move by the brand, and one which I hope rewards them with a renewed following.

4. No Spank You

A video of what is probably the most bizarre performance review ever has emerged, in which employees at a Chinese bank were spanked for poor performance by their trainer after a training session – publicly. Not only this, but apparently he cut their hair too.

The video has obviously sparked outrage, and the trainer has issued an apology but caveated the tactic as “a training model I have tried for years.” Yeesh.

5. Icelandic Commentator Loses His Cool

Whether you’re interested in the Euros or not, this audio of an Icelandic commentator losing his damn mind when Iceland scores the winning goal against Austria in the final moments of injury time should definitely have you grinning alongside him.

The 2-1 victory over Austria means that Iceland will now advance to round 16 of Euro 2016 – a massive achievement for the tiny nation. So you can see why he was so ecstatic.